


An Ordinary Boy

by lusilly



Series: Earth-28 [19]
Category: Batman Incorporated (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days, Robin: Son of Batman (Comics)
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Family, Gen, Leviathan - Freeform, Medical Trauma, Mommy Issues, Mother-Son Relationship, Reunions, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 22:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12921321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lusilly/pseuds/lusilly
Summary: Jason Todd receives a call from Talia al Ghul. She asks him for a favor.In which Damian sees his mother again for the first time in a decade, and gets his spine ripped open (again).





	An Ordinary Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So this writing isn't super great because I'm in a creative rut, but this fic was necessary to bridge Damian's broken relationship with his mother around the time of Home Safe & Tucked Away into a more amiable relationship come Fiat iusticia. Check out both of those fics in my profile.
> 
> This fic is STRONGLY informed by Earth-28 canon (no huge changes to preboot canon there, go check out the series!) though it can be read on its own. Thanks for reading!
> 
> The incident with the Titans referred to throughout this can be found in Restoration.

What good is this ridiculous secret I am asked  
to keep? With the feathers ripped cleanly away,  
I tuck the stems along my spine. I bandage them down—  
cloth wound under my armpits, tightly wound  
around my chest. I fashion myself into an ordinary boy.

[-"An Ordinary Boy," C. Dale Young](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/91261/an-ordinary-boy)

\----

            The safehouse by the docks was Jason’s least favorite. Little more than a glorified attic crawlspace, it was one bare room with a plain mattress in the corner, shelves of medical supplies, nonperishables, and weaponry covering the walls. Jason had to stoop to get in through the entrance, and the ceilings were so low he always found himself dropping his shoulders, lowering his head and curving his spine against the claustrophobia. It made his heart race, his pulse quickening for unknown reasons. He figured it out eventually, during an extended stay after he almost got shot to death. In the middle of the night he’d woken up with his chest tight and heavy, like steel wires wrapping around his lungs and heart. _Coffin_ , he’d thought. _Feels like a coffin_.

            On this particular night, in the suffocating heat of the last throes of summertime, Jason had been stitching up a shoulder wound when an old comm rang, a line he’d thought had been long since disconnected.

            Answering it felt strangely familiar, like slipping into old clothes he hadn’t fully expected to still fit. He didn’t want to run it through his commlink in case Oracle was listening in, so he put the old comm on speaker and set it down beside him as he tugged surgical needle through the wound in his shoulder. “How do you expect me to know?” he asked, sounding slightly impatient. “I’m only there for Hanukkah and Alfred’s birthday.”

            On the phone, Talia’s voice was tinny and distorted, but still as characteristically haughty as he had always known her to be. “Don’t lie to me, Jason,” she said sharply, like an accusation. “I know you have a relationship with my son.”

            “A relationship?” he echoed, wiping the wound with a rag and turning around to take a swig of whiskey. He dragged his arm across his mouth, then admitted, “I mean, sure. Legally speaking he’s my little brother, but that doesn’t mean we get brunch on Sundays and gossip.”

            Talia let out a very derisive grunt of laughter at the word _brother_ , which Jason politely decided to ignore. “You owe it to me.”

            “Oh, do I?” asked Jay, his tone mild as he disinfected the wound, which burned badly. “How long am I gonna hang on to that debt, Talia?”

            “Until it’s repaid,” she said shortly. “This is the second time I have asked for your help where it concerns my son. Don’t disappoint me again.”

            “Is the first time back when you asked me to kidnap him?” Something like four years ago Talia had been desperate to get Damian back for reasons she’d never fully explained to Jason. 

             “Not _kidnap_. Retrieve.”

            “Listen,” said Jason, wiping his hands on a rag, then picking up the communicator. “I know that – y’know, I know that you and I have a few very specific things in common, so I see why you think you can come to me for this, but if you’ve got beef with Bruce you need to talk to him directly. I’m not gonna be your henchman. I’m not henching for you, T.”

            “It isn’t safe for him in Gotham. I’m asking you to help me protect my child, it has nothing to do with the Batman-”

            “Didn’t say that,” said Jay, cutting her off. “I said _Bruce_ , actually-”

            “Do not interrupt me,” she said coldly, and even through the distorted comm line her voice sent a chill down Jason’s spine. “You, like his father, think me so petty and possessive. You think I want to own him. He is not a pet, and you are all so quick to forget it was I who gave him away to begin with.”

            “OK,” sighed Jason, swinging his legs up to lay down on the shitty mattress. “You do know that talking about _giving him away_ sounds like he _is_ a pet and you _are_ possessive, right?”

            “I am trying,” she insisted, “to protect him.”

            “From what?”

            Talia’s line went so silent Jason thought she’d closed the line. He called her name, and when she responded, her words were clipped and wary. “There are always threats, Jason.”

            “Sure,” agreed Jay, nodding his head. “Don’t have to tell me. Why do you think Bruce can’t handle it? He’s done a halfway decent job of taking care of his boy this far.”

            This obviously rankled Talia. “ _My_ boy.”

            Jason let out a little chuckle. “Not really helping the whole _possessive_ angle.”

            “It doesn’t matter. It has been brought to my attention that Damian has returned to the streets, and what he doesn’t know could get him killed.”

            “So tell me,” said Jay. “I’ll tell him.”

            “No.”

            “Why not?”

            “Because,” said Talia, icily, “you are not my son. Some things must stay within the family.”

            “I’m family. On the other side, that is.”

            The idea was a little disconcerting to Jason, though, so he was glad when Talia ignored this comment. “My son is no longer a child,” she said, firm and regal. Jason could imagine her standing alone on the craggy bluffs beyond her headquarters, though he didn’t know for certain where she was today. He imagined the white cliffs of southern England, or the Rock of Gibraltar, or maybe the rooftop floor of the Burj Khalifa, or some cold outcropping in the Himalayas. Then he thought of Damian, sullen and irritable Damian, with whom Jason had somehow grown pretty close over the past year. Though he said nothing, Jason had to disagree with Talia. Damian was absolutely still a child. “His father cannot keep him locked away from me on his whim,” Talia continued. “If Damian will see me, it is his decision.”

            “A decision he’d be more inclined to make if you gave him all the information,” Jason pointed out. “Best way to get a Robin’s attention is to give him a mission. Tell me what’s up and I’ll do what I can.”

            “I want to see him, Jason.”

            “I understand that. But I can’t guarantee anything.”

            “I _need_ to see him. Not a call, not a letter, I need him here. With me.”

            “No promises,” repeated Jay. “Where’s here?”

            “I will send you the coordinates.”

            Jason sighed. “Guess that’s the best I’ll get. I’ll talk to him. But again, he’s your son, so he can be just as stubborn as your ass. He probably won’t even listen to me.”

            “I listen to you,” countered Talia. “And you’re right. He is _my_ son.”

            There was a short silence.

            Talia said, “Thank you, Jason,” and terminated the connection.

            For a few minutes, Jay laid there on the mattress, the wound on his shoulder stinging. Then he let out a short sigh, and he opened another line on his commlink.

            His call was instantly acknowledged. “Oracle,” came her voice.

            “Hey, O,” said Jay. “You got a read on Robin?”

            “If you need backup, Ember’s in the area.”

            This took Jason by surprise; he hadn’t known Ember was cleared to work as official backup. He’d thought her and her team were still considered amateurs. “Nah, I’m good. I gotta talk to him about something.”

            “Little late for that,” Barbara replied. “He’s in for the night.”

            It was almost three AM. “Oh, damn. Already?”

            “He’s only been back in the saddle for a few months now, so he’s taking it easy. Usually heads in by two.”

            “OK,” sighed Jay. “Guess I’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way. Thanks anyway.”

            He closed the line, grimacing. Sure, Jason had grown closer with his youngest brother over the past few years, but in that time the topic of Damian’s mother had come up maybe once. He knew it was a sore spot for the kid, and he didn’t want to poke an old bruise, particularly not when he was just beginning to get back on his feet. Damian was returning to Robin after a difficult year. Jason had no desire to interrupt his rhythm, make him lose his balance.

            And he certainly wasn’t going to kidnap Damian. If he didn’t want to see Talia, Jay wouldn’t make him; but Talia had had a point. Bruce’s feelings where Damian’s mother was concerned were clear, and he would categorically refuse to let Damian see her. He'd have a better chance to speak freely if Jay could get him out of the house, talk to him somewhere he wouldn’t feel pressured to put on that performative al Ghul hatred, where his loyalty to his father’s family would be less airtight.

            Flipping through options vaguely in his mind, Jason looked at his phone. He had a few calendar notifications, mostly about dinner with Tam so he wouldn’t forget, a few reminders to collect money from his lieutenants, and then he stopped, staring at a upcoming reminder for next week. An idea crept up in the back of his mind.

            All of this led up to Jason coming down the steps from the Manor three days after Damian’s nineteenth birthday, which according to Dick apparently wasn’t even his precise date of birth, though Jay wasn’t really clear on the mechanics of that whole business. Upstairs, Alfred had offered him a slice of leftover birthday cake.

            Bruce didn’t turn around when Jason entered the cave, which didn’t surprise him. But not for nothing, Bruce had been putting in some decent effort for a while now to invite Jay back into the family, taking great care to include him in family events, even going so far as try to have the occasional heart-to-heart. Serious conversations always wound up flat or devolved into an argument, so though Bruce had toned it down, Jason thought that all things considered they were on exceptionally good terms.

            “You and Damian leave tonight?” asked Bruce, without turning around from the computer display before him.

            “Yep,” answered Jay, lingering by the specimen analysis table. “As soon as he’s ready.”

            Bruce took pause; it was unlike Damian to be tardy to something he’d be anticipating. “He’s not finished packing?”

            “He is,” said Jay mildly, poking around at the delicate equipment. “I think I just caught him in the middle of the nap. I’ll give him a minute.”

            This made sense, so Bruce gave a short nod. “He’s having some trouble adapting to the new schedule. I’ve asked him to dial back on his work with Neon Knights, but he won’t hear it.” There was also the fact that Damian had recently changed his medication, and as such was struggling to get use to the side effects, one of which being near constant drowsiness. But Bruce didn’t think that was his information to share.

            “Oh, yeah,” said Jay, glancing up at Bruce. “Tam says he’s doing great. Says she’s about ready to recommend him for a promotion.”

            In a very uncharacteristic admission, Bruce bowed his head in acknowledgement and said, “We’re very proud of him.” The royal _We_ , Jason thought, because saying _I_ would be way too personal for the Batman. Bruce paused, then asked, “How is Tamara?”

            This took Jay aback, but he rolled with it. “She’s good,” he said. “Yeah. I heard you had a conversation with Lucius, uh, thanks for that. We,” _We_ , guess Jason wasn’t ready for that level of personal connection either, “appreciate it.”

            But Bruce had nothing to say to this: he merely nodded without looking away from the computer. “When will you be back?”

            “Friday at the latest,” answered Jay. “Probably sooner, knowing him.”

            “I suppose I shouldn’t hope that this is actually a secret trip to Disneyland, like last time.”

            “No,” laughed Jay, leaning back against the table. “I don’t have Cass’s sense of humor, unfortunately. I might hit her up and see if she wants to get in on this, though.”

            “She’s got her own assignments.”

            “Yeah, but I’m sure it gets lonely all the way out in Hong Kong. She might like a change of scenery.”

            Bruce could not argue with this. Turning slightly in his seat, finally glancing away from the computer, he eyed Jason.

            “Be careful,” he said. “Keep him safe.”

            “It’s the other way around,” countered Jay, shaking his head. “He’s a whole lot better than I am, he’ll be looking out for my ass.”

            “Jason.”

            “I know, I know,” he sighed. “I won’t let him jump in front of a bullet for me, or anything. Don’t worry, Bruce,” he said, with a tight grin. “I’ve got a pretty good track record when it comes to getting my partners out alive,” far above them, he heard the sound of the secret door from the grandfather clock slip open and closed, “unlike some people I could name.”

            If Bruce had a response to that, he was silenced by Damian coming down the stairs. “Jason,” he barked, from three quarters of the way down. “Are we going?”

            “Sure,” said Jay, getting up. “Bruce,” he said, nodding at the older man, offering him a one-handed salute.

            He headed up the stairs, and Damian turned to follow him. But then Bruce called, “Damian.”

            Jay turned around to catch Damian’s gaze. He rolled his eyes, and then he held up his index finger to Jay, as if to indication, _One moment_.

            He turned around. “Yes?”

            Bruce gestured with one hand, motioning for Damian to come over to him. Though he let out a little sigh of annoyance, he did so dutifully, descending the rest of the steps and crossing over to the computer station. Jason turned away casually, pretending he wasn’t straining his ears to hear what was being exchanged between Bruce and his favorite son (maybe second favorite – Dick still ranked pretty high up there).

            But Bruce had mastered the art of speaking low enough not to be heard, and Jay could not make out words from the quiet burr of his voice across the Cave. He could hear Damian, though. “Yes. I will. When I get back, yes. Of course.”

            Then Bruce cocked his head slightly, as if to say _Go_ , and Damian jogged back across the Cave, skipping steps on his way up. “Let’s go,” he said to Jay, as he passed him.

            They took one of the jets, Jason in the pilot’s seat, Damian beside him. When Jay headed due east, Damian asked, “So this _isn’t_ a secret Disneyland trip?”

            Jay laughed. “You know what? Your dad said that same exact thing. Nah, I’m not as fun as Cass.”

            Peering out at the sky before them, Damian reminded him, “As I recall, you were there too.”

            “Yeah, 'cause she asked me to come.” He glanced around at Damian. “Why? Would you prefer that to a real mission?”

            “No,” answered Damian shortly. “I was prepared to be disappointed, is all. Besides, I really didn’t think you had it in you.”

            Shooting a grin over at Damian, Jay asked, “In me? To do what?”

            “To take me home,” said Damian mildly, without looking back at him.

            The temperature in the cabin instantly dropped. Jason said nothing, but he looked over at Damian again, concern knit across his brow. There was a loaded silence.

            Then, carefully, Jay began, “Damian…I’m not – of course I’m not gonna-”

            “What?” asked Damian, arching an eyebrow at Jason. “Do you think I don’t know the locations of all my mother’s bases? Did you think I wouldn’t put two and two together when I saw your coordinates?”

            “Listen, I’m _not_ taking you back to her, that’s not why I did this-”

            “I know you know her,” said Damian dispassionately, studying Jason’s face. “I don’t know how, but I know you do. Better than Dick does, anyhow.” Jay struggled to come up with a reply to this, and Damian asked, “Is she looking for me?”

            For a long moment, Jason didn’t answer. And then, grimly, he peered out at the sky before them. “She says she just wants to talk.”

            “Yes. Because we make a habit of taking supervillains at their word.”

            “She’s your mom, Damian. She’s just trying to look out for you, she says you’re in danger or something, and she can help.”

            “Textbook manipulation, Jason,” Damian told him, sounding almost bored. “She’s manufacturing a threat to make herself look like my savior. You really shouldn’t fall for it.”

            “ _Look_ ,” said Jay, his grip tight on the controls. “I’m not taking you back to her. I’m taking you on a mission that happens to be a little close to one of her compounds. She called me and told me she wanted to talk to you, so I thought I’d give you the option. If you didn’t want to, we were gonna take care of the mission and go straight back home.” He added, “To Gotham.” When Damian said nothing, Jay glanced at him. “Damian,” he said. “I’m not either of your parents, I’m not gonna make any decisions for you. I just thought maybe you’d like the chance to decide for yourself, without your dad breathing down your neck.”

            “You think he doesn’t know?” asked Damian sharply. “He’s been keeping track of her for years.”

            “That would be why I gave him false coordinates."

            “And you think he didn’t see right through that?”

            “I think if he had any suspicion at all that I was willingly putting you in danger, he wouldn’t have let you leave the goddamn house. So I don’t know, maybe. But he decided to trust me anyway.” Jason paused, glanced at Damian. “Maybe you should try it.”

            With his arms defiantly crossed, Damian said, “Not when you manufacture some pretend mission to get me back on her radar.”

            “It isn’t _pretend_ , it checks out.”

            “She certainly would orchestrate it so you’d think it did.”

            “You don’t want to do this?” demanded Jay, glancing back at Damian. “’Cause if you don’t, fine, I’ll turn this around, or maybe we’ll keep going ‘til we reach Hong Kong or something and we can hang out with Cass. That’s fine by me, all I wanted to do was give you some time away from your dad.”

            “I already had that,” said Damian sharply. “Didn’t he tell you I went to London?”

            “London?” echoed Jason doubtfully. “Everyone and their brother knows that was a cover, though I don't got any idea for what. You didn’t talk to your mom then, did you?”

            “No,” said Damian stonily. “I haven’t spoken to her since before my father came back.”

            “What, from being fake dead? That’s a long-ass time.”

            Damian didn’t answer this. He looked away, busying himself with a display panel before him. After some time, he looked back up and asked, “What’s the mission?”

            “It’s a trafficking deal,” said Jay, without hesitation. “Your specialty. Would’ve invited Arsenal to help but I heard you and her had kind of a falling-out.”

            “She did try to kill me,” said Damian coldly.

            “Way I heard it, you all tried to kill each other,” countered Jay. “By way of an angry supervillain mom who wasn’t your own.”

            “Got to change it up occasionally,” said Damian, leaning back in his seat. “Keep things exciting.”

            They said nothing more for a moment. Jay didn’t know all the details of what happened with the Titans, but he did know that Damian left them all – including his first girlfriend – in a bad way. “Well,” sighed Jay. “Like I said. If you don’t want to do this, we can turn back around.”

            For quite some time, Damian said nothing. He seemed agitated, though it was nothing compared to toxic pit of anger and aggression he’d been this time last year, right after things fell apart with the Titans. Jason hadn’t been around for much of that, but he knew that Dick had to come home for a few months to help Bruce, and that whatever Damian did resulted in him being banned from patrol for almost a year. Jay badly wanted to know what had gone down, but he had no desire to poke the bear, and Tim had only given him a shrug, claiming he didn’t know anything. “Something about going on a bender,” he’d said, from behind his desk in Wayne Tower, focused on the computer screen before him. Jay had thought Tam, for whom Damian interned over the past year, might know something, but she too came up empty-handed.

            Finally, after so long Jason thought he wasn’t going to say anything at all, Damian asked shortly, “What are the mission details?”

            “Human trafficking ring in the Caucasus,” Jay answered immediately. “They funnel into the European sex trade, mostly refugees and people looking to get out of poverty or war-torn areas.” He glanced at Damian, who looked unhappy. He knew this was the type of mission Damian – hell, Robin – couldn’t turn down. “Got a big detainment center in the mountains, a bottleneck into the continent. That’s where we’re headed.”

            “Their center of operations?”

            “I mean, corporate HQ is probably some rich asshole in the financial district of some fancy European city or something,” Jay said fairly. “But this is their main hidey-hole, and hitting it is gonna eat up their time and money while we hand over the evidence to Interpol.”

            Damian nodded; it made sense to target wherever the most people were being held. Rescue was the top priority. “Security?”

            “Not exactly high-tech, but plenty of goons to punch. Should be a breeze.” Damian didn’t say anything, so Jay continued, “And then we pack up and leave. Back to Gotham before you know it.”

            “What about my mother?” asked Damian. He sounded annoyed.

            Jay shrugged. “We don’t see her. It’s fine, I told you I wouldn’t make you.”

            “Maybe I want to.”

            Glancing at Damian, Jay began uncertainly, “OK. I’m starting to get some mixed signals here, kiddo.”

            Still irritated, Damian gave an emphatic shake of his head. “I don’t – _not_ want to see her. It’s been almost a decade.” He broke off abruptly, his jaw tightly clenched. Refusing to look around at Jay, he muttered, “I’d just like it to be on my own terms.”

            “Yeah,” said Jay immediately, nodding. “Sure, that makes sense. I’m sorry, I should’a told you all of this before we left, I just thought if Bruce found out he’d make that decision for you. I thought you deserved more than that.”

            “She shouldn’t have had to go through you to begin with.”

            “Maybe not,” answered Jay. “But what else was she supposed to do? Bruce won’t even listen to her.”

            “She could have contacted me directly.”

            “How?”

            “I don’t know,” Damian shot back, venom in his voice. “But I’m nineteen now, not twelve. There’s no reason she should have to go through daddy to get to me.”

            There was something fundamentally funny about Damian referring to Bruce, even derisively, as _daddy_ , but Jay stopped himself from saying anything. “Listen, I don’t know what she's thinking,” he replied plainly. “I can’t answer for her.” He paused, then added, “But if you _do_ want to see her, when we get there. I can ask her to meet us at a safehouse or something. Our terms, not hers.” He glanced at Damian. “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

            Damian let out a sigh of resignation, peering out the display before them. “Fine,” he said. “Let me think on it.”

            Jason did so, saying nothing more for the remainder of the journey.

            When they arrived, Jay took them to a safehouse in the mountains. Entering through a secret door, visible dislike was evident on Damian’s face for reasons that Jay couldn’t discern, but which had to do with the memory of a mountain safehouse much like this one, and the ache of broken ribs and a broken friendship with Lian Harper. They scouted the location, found it teeming with activity, and laid out a plan for the next day. At nine PM Eastern Time, an alarm went off on Damian’s phone, and he went back into his quarters and rooted around until he pulled out something that rattled like a pill bottle.

            Everyone in the immediate Batfamily was aware that Damian had been in treatment for his OCD for years now, though Jay had always gotten the feeling he’d been the last to find out. Ultimately it had been Alfred who told him, a few months after Damian received an official diagnosis of PTSD. “What?” Jason had asked, almost in disbelief. “How? From what?”

            “I imagine a great number of things could trigger post-traumatic stress, Jason,” Alfred had replied, assembling cucumber sandwiches. “I imagine that I don’t have to tell that to any of you boys. You, especially.”

            As always, Jason didn’t want to talk about that, didn’t want to acknowledge the big dead elephant in the room. Ever since he died, his entire life had been centered around death, revolving around the horror and the trauma and the anger it had stirred up inside of him. The thought of getting treatment – getting _better_ , which seemed impossible because there was no _better_ this was just the way he was now – frightened him.

            The Damian Jay knew was surly, occasionally depressive, and almost as obsessive as his father. He wondered what the fuck the kid was like when he was unmedicated.

            Damian slept soundly for a solid eight hours. Jason, who slept lightly and rarely for more than a few hours at a time, passed the time on his own, poring over files, bouncing a ball against the wall, clicking through some shitty Azerbaijani television. When night fell the next day, they took off in an off-road Jeep. “You draw fire,” said Damian. “I’ll go in and disable defense inside. Then we rendezvous and take them out.”

            “Sounds good,” answered Jay. “Let’s go, kiddo.”

            “Don’t call me that,” said Damian.

            Doing exactly as Damian said, Jay made a big noise and fuss to draw most of the guards out to the front of the compound, allowing Damian to enter unnoticed. Damian wound through the dark corridors, finding the ceiling oppressively low. He encountered far fewer obstacles than he’d anticipated; more men had apparently been attracted to Jason’s diversion than he thought. Or maybe there was something else going on. It unsettled him, made him cautious and slow.

            He reached a large steel door, industrial-looking. It brought back memories from a similar mission years ago, which brought back memories of Lian, which brought back the Titans which brought back Iris which made him feel bad again, so he merely broke the padlock on the door and tugged hard.

            It rolled open. To his surprise, the room was well-lit inside, fluorescent lights buzzing on the ceiling, revealing several rows of bunkbeds as if military barracks. Damian’s stomach lurched only slightly, because as terrible as the sight of kidnapped children handcuffed to their beds could be, this was already not as bad as he had anticipated. They looked up at him vacantly, making no sound when he entered the room. None of them could have been any older than fifteen.

            The first thing he did – the first thing always to be done when rescuing abused children – was put his hands up, displaying no weapon nor intention of violence. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, first in Azerbaijani, then repeated it once more in Turkish. “I’m here to help you.”

            When this only garnered him blank looks, he tried Russian, then Farsi. On the bottom bunk of the nearest bed, a girl asked, “ _Min’ant_?” and Damian could’ve breathed a sigh of relief.

            “My name is Robin,” he answered, in Arabic. This time the kids looked like they understood. “I’m going to get you out of here. Please stay quiet.” He went to the girl’s bed, taking lock pick tools from his belt. Gesturing at the handcuff, he said, “I’m going to help you out of this. I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”

            When the girl nodded, staring at him with wide eyes, he moved in to work on the cuffs. It didn’t take long, but with each precious second his chances of getting them all out before the goons made it back decreased. He could only hope that Jay was putting on a good show.

            Damian was so tall and the bunks so low that even hunched over the handcuffs, he still had to be careful not to bang his head. Having undone the cuffs, he straightened up, asking the girl, “Can you walk?” when suddenly a hand shot down from above him – the child in the top bunk – and grabbed hold of his yellow cape, giving it a sudden jerk. His guard down, the force of the tug slammed his forehead into the base of the top bunk, and he groaned in pain. The girl he’d just freed kicked hard at his left knee, blowing it out and sending him stumbling away, lights flashing behind his eyes. “What?” he asked, his brain working sluggishly, trying to understand what he’d done wrong. His cape was still about his shoulders, and he didn’t fully realize he’d lapsed back into English. “I’m trying to _help_ you-”

            A searing pain rent through him, so cataclysmically powerful he felt like he’d been struck by lightning, nerves screaming in pain, his brain instantly alight with fear and dangersense. Blood pounded through his ears as a blade struggled down his back, resisting down the length of his spine. Adrenaline rushed into him, spilling out in the form of fresh scarlet blood weeping down around him, turning the air sick and coppery. The pain felt paradoxically distant and deafening, but he could not form words, only gaped at the room of captured children before him. They were sitting up now in their beds, staring at him. In their uncuffed hand, each of them held a knife.

            Sensation trickled out of his hands, and his legs buckled beneath him. He gasped for breath: it felt like there were steel wires around his heart and lungs, squeezing, _squeezing_ , and his entire body screamed at him to _move_ but he could not.

            Before he blacked out, it registered in the back of his mind that the children were no longer watching him.

\----

            When Jay could not raise Damian on his commlink, he knew immediately something was wrong. “Ah, fuck it,” he muttered to himself, and he took out his handgun and shot twice. Both bullets landed true, and the two remaining goons he’d been trying to incapacitate fell to the ground, a hole in their skull.

            He sprinted into the base, expecting to find more resistance, Damian maybe in the middle of combat or else captured or else – Jason felt sick, and he put that far away from his mind. But as he raced through the steel corridors, he found no one. Everyone must have come out to defend the place. That didn’t bode well.

            The stench of blood reached Jay before anything else. He retched, but he didn’t have any time to investigate the bodies on the bed, or the two children who lay bleeding on either side of Damian. Two large daggers, possibly hunting knives, lay discarded near the children’s hands; one was longer and sharper, sharp enough, Jay could tell, to cut right through Damian’s Kevlar reinforced uniform.

            The scar on Damian’s back had been reopened top to bottom in a brutal, ragged slice. “Oh, fuck,” said Jason aloud, and he dropped to Damian’s side. “Hey! Robin! Come on, talk to me.”

            Jay could not turn Damian onto his back without risking further damage, but he didn’t know what the fuck else to do, so he sat there uselessly, his hands hovering above Damian’s frayed wound. He could not believe what was happening, was halfway still convinced it was a dream, how could he have fucked up so bad? How could he have let this happen?

            His cheek pressed against the bloodstained floor, Damian made a quiet gurgling sound in the back of his throat. Jay’s heart started to pump again and he came back to the present, digging into his own utility belt for medical supplies though he could not imagine he had anything which could help Damian in a state like this.

            Damian said something, but his voice was so faint Jay could not hear. “Hey,” said Jay. “Stay with me, kiddo. Don’t go anywhere, it’s gonna be OK. I’m gonna get you out of here, it’s gonna be OK.”

            Voice still weak but slightly louder, Damian managed to mumble, “Don’t – _call_ me that.”

            With a shaky laugh, Jay nodded, his head bobbing up and down. He unspooled the bandages he carried, laying them across Damian’s back, knowing they’d do nothing. “Sure thing,” he said. “We get out of here, I promise, I’ll never say it again. Just stay with me, OK? Keep talking.”

            Though his eyes had never fully opened, Damian’s lashes fluttered downwards once more, closing completely. Dutifully, he still spoke. “Two,” he said. “Three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen.” He continued without pause, counting prime numbers to help him stay conscious. A classic Robin tactic.

            As the initial shock wore off, it took about three seconds for Jay to realize what he had to do now. He keyed his commlink, and when the line opened he barked, “Hey, I need you. _Now_.”

            Talia al Ghul arrived within minutes. Damian lost consciousness somewhere around 941, and Jay could do little more than try and stem the bleeding. When she came through the doors, she came with an emergency medical team, who took Damian on a stretcher immediately back out, no doubt to a helicopter waiting to carry him back to his mother’s compound. Jason had expected Talia to go with him. Instead, she stood there beside Jason, who was still on his knees,  covered in Damian’s blood. They were left alone in a room full of corpses.

            There was a heavy silence. Talia did not look down at Jason.

            “What happened?” she asked quietly.

            “It was a trafficking ring,” said Jason, his voice hard, defensive. “It checked out. It’s been active for years, reports going back a decade, there’s no reason it should’ve been a trap, no way they would’ve _known_ -”

            Before he could blink, the back of Talia’s hand came soaring through the air, connecting solidly with the side of Jason’s face. “Idiot,” she hissed. “Of course they knew. You absolute buffoon. You don’t _listen_ to me.”

            Jason did not reply, his hand pressed against his stinging cheek. “Will he be OK?”

            “He’ll live,” answered Talia, without pause. “No thanks to you.”

            Relief washed over Jay, permitting him to breathe once more. He got to his feet, his knees now stained with blood from the floor. Beneath him, his legs felt unsteady. “How’d they know we were coming?”

            “I have told you,” answered Talia. Her eyes raked around the room, observing the gore dispassionately. “He is in danger. They have eyes on him.”

            “They who?”

            “It isn’t your concern,” said Talia, shaking her head, refusing to budge a single inch.

            “Whoever they are, they almost just killed my little brother,” said Jason, his voice hard and dangerous. “You bet your ass I’m concerned, Talia.”

            Finally, she turned to look at him. Her eyes were a honey-brown color, lighter than her son’s, but in this room surrounded by blood they seemed curiously flat, all variation smoothed into cold, glassy fury.

            She gestured to the room full of children slaughtered by their own hand. “Children,” she said loudly, as if she could fill the room with her voice, cover up the terrible things that happened there, “born and bred to die.” She knelt and took the hilt of the knife red with Damian’s blood. “A stab in the back,” she said, “with an assassin’s blade. You were supposedly trained by a detective, were you not? What do you think?”

            Jay stared at the knife, then out at the dead bodies on the bunks. His stomach squirmed, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat. But suddenly, all at once, it clicked into place.

            He glanced back at Talia, a crease on his brow. “A League splinter cell.”

            Talia was already shaking her head, but Jay now understood why she had refused to tell him: to admit there was a group of rogue assassins would be to legitimize them, and as the Demon’s Head, she could not risk that. “I have made many enemies, and inherited those of my father and my sister,” she said, her head held high, regal as ever. “There are those who seek to decapitate a dynasty. To strike at me through my son.”

            But this raised even more questions. “Why not just kill him now, then?”

             “Perhaps they believe they did.”

            “Nope,” said Jay. “If an assassin was trying to take him out, they’d stayed alive long enough to confirm the kill. All of this,” he gestured at the room, the stinking miasma of blood heavy in the air, “is just set decoration.” He paused, watching her. “This is a message, T.”

            This deduction seemed to satisfy Talia, reassure her that she could let him in on the secret. “They wish to frighten me into submission,” she said lowly. “And they would not dare kill him here, not with you to bear witness and hear my explanation.”

            “Why not?”

            “Because,” she said harshly, slicing her gaze towards him, “then you go home to Gotham, and you come back with the Batman, and he ends them. That is not a gamble they’re willing to take.”

            “You think I’m not gonna be telling Bruce about this?”

            “I think his first instinct is to defend, not aggress,” said Talia. Her hands were clasped tightly behind her back. In the stark fluorescent light, shadows flickered across her face, making her look older. Or maybe she’d stopped using the Pits. Or maybe Jay just hadn’t seen her in enough years to make a difference. “I think that instinct dies with his sons.”

            Jason stared at her for a long moment, eyes locked on hers. He flinched first, looking away.

            “I tried to tell him,” Talia continued, no softness in her voice. “But he would not listen to me. Neither did you, and now because of you my son is in pain. I blame you as much as I blame they who did this.”

            Jay protested, “Talia-” but she held up a hand, her expression stricken.

            “Do not argue with me,” she said. “Leave here, Jason Todd.”

            “No,” he said.

            “Do not test me.”

            “I’m not going anywhere until I know he’s OK,” said Jay stubbornly. “You take me right back to wherever the fuck he is, and when he’s better I’m taking him home. Besides,” he added, “you just said it. I go back to Gotham, I come back with Batman. Don’t make me do that to you.”

            Talia said nothing for a long moment. Then, wordlessly, she turned and left the room, abandoning the bodies of children growing cold. Jason followed her.

            It was a short ride in a military-grade chopper Talia’s base, which was a surprisingly utilitarian compound in the Chechnyan foothills. On all sides it was surrounded by barbed wire and guards patrolling the perimeter. Jason followed her inside. Without speaking to him once, she led him directly to a laboratory. She entered only halfway, lingering by the door. Jason peered into the room from behind her.

            Stripped to the waist and suspended weightlessly in viscous green liquid, Damian was unconscious. Wires and needles and mechanical arms worked deftly on his back, skin peeled back to facilitate access to his spine. Deep in the bottom of his stomach, Jay felt a stab of recognition, a memory from years ago of a baby in a biotube. Back then he had only caught a glance of it out of the corner of his eye, and in the moment, with Talia by his side, he’d thought it was funny. _Something you gotta tell me, Talia?_ he’d asked her, grinning. Her expression severe, she had granted him no reply. The memory made him ache with guilt. He should have done something.

            “The biotube makes his physiology more malleable,” said Talia abruptly, her eyes on her son. “He will stay there until we repair any nerve damage.”

            “How long will that take?”

            “Not long. Hours, maybe.”

            This sounded impossible. “He got shanked down his spinal cord and you’re telling be he’s gonna be all fixed up in an hour or so?”

            “Topical damage can be healed after he is removed from the biotube,” Talia told him coolly. “And it works quickly, Jason. Not as quick as its source, but better than any modern medicine can do.”

            For a moment he didn’t know what she meant, and then his eyes widened. He looked back at the biotube, at Damian’s body through the haze of green liquid.

            “Why bother fixing him at all?” asked Jason, but all warmth had vanished from his voice. “Why not just give him a good ol’ dunk?”

            “Lazarus Pits are precious resources,” said Talia stoically. “There is no need to contaminate one when we can safely draw from it instead.”

            Jay suspected it was more than this. He knew that, like him, Talia too had experienced firsthand the burning madness of the Pit. He could not blame her for wanting to spare her son the agony. Though he wondered if that wasn’t oversimplifying it, if maybe all things touched by the Pit had a touch of madness to them. Maybe growing a child in a biotube instead of the womb did things to him neither Jason nor Talia could even imagine.

            While Damian was in the biotube, Jason refused to leave his side. Talia came and went, apparently having other matters to attend to and confident in the abilities of her medical team. By the door, two guards stood armed to the teeth. They weren’t Ubu, and they couldn’t have been much older than Damian himself. On their chests they wore a patch of red, inlaid with an upside-down black triangle.

            Finally, the biotube was drained, and Damian was removed. The medical team required that Jason wear a surgical mask when they did so, and they refused to let him touch Damian, citing potential risk of infection. They wheeled him to a secure medical bay which Jay could not enter, though they permitted him to continue his watch through an observation window the size of a wall. Damian was lain on his stomach, the ugly, jagged wound along the length of his back facing upwards. Expertly, the doctors began to close the wound. The two guards with the red insignia on their chest stood at the foot of Damian’s bed, at attention.

            Transfixed by the image before him, Jay almost didn’t notice when someone sidled up slightly behind him. Expecting someone else, he turned around to say, “Talia-” but then he stopped short.

            A woman smiled back at him. She was smaller than Talia, dressed in the gold and green of those most favored by the Demon’s Head. A scarf was wrapped loosely around her head, obscuring her hair. On her breast, she wore the red and black insignia shared by Damian’s guards.

            She spoke with an accent. “Hello, Jason Todd.”

            “Uh,” said Jay. “Hi. Who are you?”

            “My name is Yasmeen.” She had to be around Jay’s age, if not younger. She stepped forward to join him at the window, and then turned her gaze to peer softly out at Damian’s unconscious form. “I owe you thanks for calling us so quickly. More serious damage could have been done.”

            “Nothing Talia couldn’t fix in her little Lazarus kiddie pool,” Jay replied warily. “You wanna tell me who you are? And you know I don’t mean your name.”

            The woman – Yasmeen – did not answer right away, still watching the boy behind the glass. Then she glanced at Jason, and she said shortly, “I was his first teacher.”

            Jay stared at her.

            “I was there when they took him out of the biotube for the very first time,” she said, turning once more to watch Damian, as if soaking in every detail. “I was his caretaker when he was little more than a baby. I taught him English and his mother tongue. When Talia could not, and she often could not, I raised him.” She offered Jay a smile. “So, again. I am grateful to you.”

            Jason knew, of course, that Talia had not been able to care for her son like most mothers did, but he had always thought of that in abstract terms, in vague impersonal words like _teachers_ or _trainers_. ‘Caretaker’ was something he had never thought of before, though it made perfect sense. Some jealous corner of his heart rebelled against this for inexplicable reasons, an unfamiliar and strangely possessive emotion clashing with the relief of knowing someone had loved and looked after Damian long before he came to his father’s family.

            He cleared his throat, then he held out his hand to her. “It’s good to meet you,” he told her. “Guess I forget sometimes he had a whole childhood before Talia sent him off.” Her handshake was brief, but firm. “You haven’t seen him in a while then, huh? What’s Talia had you doing since then, training more baby assassins?”

            “Not quite,” answered Yasmeen absently, still looking through the glass at Damian. “Talia released me from her service when she released her son from her care. I’ve been at Oxford since, studying Philosophy and Modern Languages.” She cast another small smile Jason’s way. “Two of his favorite subjects. I’d like to think of that as my influence on him.”

            Jay eyed her, sizing her up. “So,” he said, “why are you back? Don’t tell me she went and got you just ‘cause Damian got himself all banged up, did she?”

            Yasmeen blinked, and then she looked up at Jason curiously. “No,” she said, sounding almost confused. “Talia invited me back because of Leviathan.”

            Before Jay could ask what the fuck Leviathan was, a loud _crash_ came from behind the window, accompanied quickly by a ragged roar of fury. Both of their gazes snapped back to Damian, now conscious and on his feet. One doctor was already on the ground, having been tossed aside by Damian as if nothing more than a bag of flour. Damian ripped the IV out of his arm and staggered over to the fallen doctor, shouting at him in Arabic. Though Jay knew a little Arabic, the words tumbling out of Damian's mouth were hoarse and garbled, and he couldn't understand any of it. It looked like Yasmeen could. “What’s he saying?” he asked, urgently.

            Yasmeen only shook her head, her lips a tight line. “He’s not in his right mind,” she replied. “They must have incorrectly adjusted the sedative dosage. He’s awake, but he’s not lucid.”

            This made sense: Jay had heard from Dick and Bruce that Damian required a much higher dose of sedatives to keep him out than his size would suggest. Once Dick had offhandedly contributed this to “Talia’s genetic meddling,” which Jay had never really believed. Until now, perhaps.

            Damian kicked the doctor in the face, and they collapsed on the ground. One of the guards moved forward to stop him, placing a hand on his shoulder, but Damian violently threw them off, then flipped them overhead, slamming them into the ground. The other guard and two more doctors moved in, trying to restrain him. Damian acted on instinct, methodically disabling them.

            “That’s it,” said Jay, tearing himself away from the window, going to try and find a door. “I’m going in.”

            “No need,” called Yasmeen, still at the window.

            “He’s going to tear those people _apart_ ,” Jay replied, anger in his voice. “And listen, you’re part of the League so maybe you don’t care about them, but if you know the same kid I do then you know he’ll hate himself for what he did while he was under, and I’m not about to let that happen.”

            Unimpressed, Yasmeen looked around at him. “Talia has this under control,” she said.

            “Doesn’t look like _control_ to me,” Jay spat, but Yasmeen merely motioned through the window. Warily, Jay moved forward to join her once more.

            Inside the room, Talia had entered. Flanked by no guards, she moved towards Damian. Around him lay the doctors and guards, either unconscious or otherwise pretending to be in order to avoid his wrath. Damian was scratching at his hands, then rubbing his bloodied fists on his eyes in a childlike caricature. “What’s she doing?” asked Jay tensely, one hand pressed against the glass. “He’s freaking out, she shouldn’t be in there alone-”

            Talia said Damian’s name. She said it accented, _Dah_ -mian, not _Day-_ mian. It then occurred to Jay that since she was the one who named him she was also the one who said it correctly, and therefore it was he and the rest of Bruce’s family who said it with an accent. It was a strange and sad realization, that none of them spoke his name the way his mother had intended. Unexpectedly, it stung at Jason’s heart.

            She said it again. Damian’s scratched-up hands moved from his face, and he said something in Arabic that sounded like a threat before slamming his foot down onto the arm of one of the guards, kicking violently at the semiautomatic weapon at their side. “Damian,” said Talia once more, and she held out her arms. He shouted something at her, furious, primal, but she didn’t stop. She reached her son and she placed her hands on his cheeks, watching him with her amber eyes, and then she wrapped her arms around him and held him close to her.

            Talia was a tall woman, but Damian’s last growth spurt had sent him shooting over six feet. He stood stock still above her for one moment, and then he seemed to collapse into her arms, gently dropping his face into the crook of her neck.

            Murmuring something in Arabic, Talia ran her fingers through her son’s hair. Jason wondered how long it had been since she last held her son.

            Once Talia coaxed him back to the hospital bed, she held his hand until the doctors could administer more drugs. He slipped back into unconsciousness once more.

            “Not surprising,” remarked Yasmeen.

            Jay glanced around at her. “What is?”

            Gesturing towards Damian, she replied, “His reaction. Talia always thought he would get used to the trauma of invasive medical procedures, but it’s impossible for a child to build up the necessary resilience for that. He has always feared the helplessness of the biotube, I think, and reliving the traumatic circumstances of his previous spinal injury can’t be easy either.” She watched Damian, worry clear in her eyes. “I had hoped he might grow out of those fears. But I suppose they linger, whether we hold onto them or not.”

            Jason too looked through the window at Damian. Talia remained by his side, though he was no longer conscious. His heart hurt once more.

            In time, Yasmeen invited Jason to rest, or to share a meal with her. He refused, choosing instead to stay there by the window into Damian’s room, waiting for him to wake up. For a while she left, but eventually returned to wait in silence by his side. Hours passed.

            Lying face down on the hospital bed, Damian stirred. Jason leaned forwards, his nose almost touching the glass. Talia shifted in her seat, blocking Damian’s face from view. He felt an uncharacteristic surge of anger towards her, but put that aside. At least someone would be there holding his hand when he woke up.

            The sound within the room was transmitted through a line into the observation area where Jason stood. Damian’s voice was hoarse, but he murmured, “Mama?”

            Talia replied in Arabic, gently. Jay saw her lift her hand, cradling her son’s cheek.

            Damian did not reply at first. Then he seemed to shift, and he asked a question. Though Jay didn’t catch the words exactly, he heard Damian say, “ _Jason_ ,” and felt a burst of affection for the kid. In response, Talia sat up straight, and then she turned halfway around to peer out at Jay.

            Though it was a one-way mirror, Damian’s gaze followed hers. He looked tired. Looking back once at his mother, he pushed himself up to sitting position. “Get me out of here,” he muttered, in English. “I don’t need a hospital bed.”

            “You need rest,” responded Talia, following his lead and switching to English.

            “I can rest perfectly fine anywhere in the compound,” announced Damian, getting to his feet. A flickering expression passed over his face, brief admittance of pain, but it disappeared quickly, professionally. “Or in Gotham, for that matter.”

            “You will stay until you are healed,” said Talia, too getting to her feet, looking her son up and down.

            Without glancing back at her, Damian replied, “I will stay until I want to go.”

            There was a moment of tension. He looked at his mother, no real cruelty on his face. Then he looked back around the room, and headed towards the only exit, the padded door through which Talia had entered.

            Immediately Jason jogged around to the door, and he apparently wasn’t the only one with that idea. A whole cadre of Talia’s attendants appeared, carrying with them every possible amenity Jay could think of. None of them wore the red and black insignia, except of course Yasmeen, who waited patiently behind Jay.

            The door to the medical bay opened, and Damian emerged. His dark eyes glanced around, finally landing and lingering on Jay. He stepped forward, and was met with a flurry of motion from Talia’s attendants. They wiped his brow, cleaned the edges the bandages covering his back, offered him a set of pills from a comically lavish tasseled pillow (which he took and swallowed without hesitation, though it made Jay’s heart pound), and then he lifted his arms to allow them to slip a cloak over his shoulders, a cloak of emerald green and spun gold. Jay wondered if it hadn’t once belonged to his grandfather.

            All of this happened at once, quickly and smoothly. Jay was surprised that Damian _didn’t_ seem at all surprised; but, he supposed, Damian had been raised like this, like royalty. Dick had tried his best to get rid of Damian’s natural sense of entitlement, the haughty arrogance of having been termed from birth a boy king. This was the first time Jason had ever seen Damian like this, and he seemed comfortable, calm and in control. It was like watching an animal finally returned to his natural habitat.

            One of the attendants bowed before Damian and offered him a long knife encased in a jeweled sheath. He glanced down at it, then waved it away. Damian's hand was bandaged. The attendant did not move.

            From behind Damian, Talia said, “No son of mine would walk in an enemy compound unarmed.”

            Damian glanced around as Talia slunk forward, meeting his gaze. “You called yourself my enemy, Mother,” he told her, his voice quiet. “I never did.” Then, without waiting for her answer, he turned back around to look at Jay. “Are you alright?” he asked.

            “Me?” asked Jay, taken aback. “I mean, yeah, but I’m not the one who got his spine ripped out.”

            “It’s certainly still there,” replied Damian, grimacing. He rolled his shoulders, stretching his neck, wincing when it hurt. “Though I imagine it’d be less painful if it weren’t. Did you call her?” he asked, to Jason. “Or did she come on her own?”

            “He called,” said Talia.

            Damian didn’t look at her. Jay glanced between them, then echoed her answer. “I called her. Why does that matter?”

            “Because,” answered Damian coolly, “the latter would be proof.”

            “Proof of what?” asked Jay.

            “That she did this to me,” said Damian. “That she engineered _violence_ in order to bring me back into her home-”

            “Damian,” said Talia harshly, striding forward and placing a heavy hand on his arm. “Had I devised this violence, believe me, it would not have ended with two dozen children dead.”

            “Why _not_?” he shot back at her, whipping his arm away from her. “Destroying children never seemed to prick your conscious before.”

            All softness cracked away from Talia’s expression as if it had been no more than a brittle shell. Lowering her voice dangerously, she told him, “I made you stronger. Every hurt you endured was intentional, my son. It is incomparable to the meaningless death-worshipping chaos of whoever did this to you.”

            Damian watched his mother for a long moment, his mouth tight. Jason glanced between the two of them, then leaned in. “If it helps,” he said, apologetically, “I don’t think she had anything to do with this. It was – something else.” _Leviathan_ , Jay thought, his mind going back to the cryptic comment Yasmeen had dropped. But he held his tongue, waiting until he had a clearer picture of what was going on. Jason added, “She saved your life, Damian,” but by then Damian was no longer looking at him. His gaze had wandered beyond Jay, and the expression had dropped from his face, replaced by something that resembled shock.

            Jay glanced around. Yasmeen stood there, smiling, her hands clasped behind her back. “ _Hamdellah assalamah_ , Damian,” she said. _Welcome home._

            “No,” said Damian, staring at her. He moved forward; behind him, Talia reached out and took the blade from the attendant Damian had refused. Stopping just past Jay, several feet away from Yasmeen, he looked at her warily, disbelievingly. “No. You don’t work for my mother anymore. I asked my father about you, you were in England, you were far away from this-”

            Yasmeen shook her head, but did not remove her hands from behind her back. “I heard my very first student was coming home,” she said simply. “I thought to myself, Yasmeen, wouldn’t you like to see the man he became?”

            She offered him a contented smile, though the look in her eyes was enigmatic. Damian’s eyes flickered down to the black and red symbol she wore.

            Talia strode past the three of them. “Come,” she said, over her shoulder. “You must eat.”

            She led them to what looked like an industrial kitchen, everything clean steel and hard chrome. Damian and Jason sat with Talia, but Yasmeen chose to stay on her feet, standing at attention by the door. Other attendants brought food and drink, pouring tea for Damian. It made Jason feel weird and out of place, uncomfortable being served. Neither Talia nor Damian seemed to notice.

            “What happened to me?” asked Damian, his voice low. “Who were those children?”

            “Victims to some mother more cruel than I,” answered Talia, raising a teacup to her lips. “I cannot tell you their names. My guess is that they all died without one.”

            Talia took a sip of tea. In the small pause she took, Jason leaned forward. “Hey, listen,” he said. “My intel must’ve been bad. I shouldn’t have let you walk in there alone.”

            Damian only glanced at him, unsatisfied. He sat up unnaturally straight, his spine rod-like. Exertion in any direction probably meant pain.

            Looking up at Talia, Damian said, “Repairing my body does nothing to endear yourself to me. Not after what you did last time.”

            Jason didn’t know what this meant, but Talia merely bowed her head in acknowledgement. “Forgive me,” she said. “But I don’t regret it. I did not send you to your father’s house to be trained by anyone but your father, certainly not some circus freak.”

            “Dick Grayson was the first father I ever knew,” said Damian stubbornly, an admission of loyalty Jay had never heard stated outright. “I won’t listen to you speak ill of him.”

            “Dick Grayson,” said Talia, sounding unimpressed, “is unworthy of you. He is a relic of your father’s pathetic penchant for self-pity, and a habitual liar who twists and poisons all things to his advantage.” Jay wondered, vaguely, if they were thinking of the same Dick Grayson. But then she said, “He is duplicitous by nature. Disloyal and nomadic by blood,” and Jason suddenly realized what she was getting at.

            “Talia, come on,” he said, leaning forward on the cold steel of the table. “You can call Dick a lotta things, but _disloyal_ is some big bullshit, and _nomadic_ is just kinda racist.”

            “Then why does he endanger you?” demanded Talia, her eyes glinting, focused on her son. “Why does he work with those who oppose me?”

            “Because you’re a supervillain, Mother, obviously,” answered Damian, dismissing this. “What do you mean, endangering me?”

            She watched him without reaction, but it was clear that she hadn't wanted to tip her hand so early. She glanced behind Damian, at Yasmeen; the woman turned to the attendants surrounding her and they dutifully emptied the room. Yasmeen closed the door behind them, and stood before it.

            “What do you know,” asked Talia, her voice very quiet, “of Leviathan?”

            An instant reaction crossed Damian’s face. “Leviathan,” he echoed. He narrowed his eyes slightly, as if struggling to recall a memory. “They tried to kill me, didn’t they?”

            “No,” answered Talia shortly. “They saved your life. I formed Leviathan five years ago, when a faction within the League of Assassins began to sow the seeds of discontent, and I learned of a plan to strike at me through that which I hold most precious.” Her eyes burned into Damian’s. “You.” She paused for a moment, then added, “You see when I asked for you back then, it was not to transform you into some brainwashed assassin, like your father suggested. I wanted to protect you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

            “Lies,” said Damian, cutting her off. “No parent destroys their child in the name of protection.”

            “I broke you _here_ ,” Talia insisted, her hands on the table before her, “so that you would never break out _there_. So that you could meet pain, and become its master. So that you would become more powerful than that which would try to hurt you. Faster, and stronger, and smarter. Not _better_ but the _best_. Believe of your mother what you want. I did this to prevent you from ever winding up like _him_.”

            It took Jason half a moment to realize Talia was pointing straight at him. He raised a hand almost defensively, speechless thrown off balance, but Damian did not look around. He glared directly into his mother’s face.

            But Jay’s heart sank as he realized Damian did not have an answer to this. He let it hang in the air for a long moment, then, the fury in his voice gone cold, he asked, "What does Dick have to do with Leviathan?”

            Sharply, Talia responded, “As if you don’t know. He’s always hated me. He would take any opportunity to undermine me.”

            “Undermine you how?”

            Talia watched Damian. Her eyes narrowed, and then she leaned back in her seat. Thoughtfully, she asked, “You _don’t_ know, do you?”

            “Know what?” asked Jason, interrupting before Damian could speak. “That Dick’s tryna stop whatever evil plans you’re cooking up now? I mean, it’s not exactly a stretch of the imagination, T.”

            A flicker of annoyance passed over Damian’s face, though at first Jay wasn’t sure what it was for. _T_ , he realized. He didn’t like the nickname.

            Well. It was awfully familiar, and Jay wouldn’t blame Damian if he wasn’t feeling particularly friendly towards any friend of his mother’s at the moment. He pulled back, as if removing himself from the conversation.

            Talia glanced upwards, towards the door. Yasmeen moved forward, placing a file before Damian, which she opened. She stayed by his side, which seemed to distract him; for one moment his gaze flickered up towards Yasmeen's face, an unsettled look in his eye. Then he turned his attention to the pages before him, examining them carefully. “What is this?” he asked, his voice flat.

            Talia cocked her head. “You don’t recognize the symbol?”

            Damian looked up at her, and shook his head. Jay leaned over, and Damian slid the file toward him. There was a shadowy photograph of what appeared to be an eye, behind which a series of crisscross lines intersected. It felt intensely familiar, but Jay couldn’t place it.

            “We don’t know who they are either,” continued Talia. “Only that the circus brat is one of them, and that they’re doing all they can to put you in harm’s way, Damian.”

            “Impossible,” said Damian. “You’re lying to me.”

            “I am not,” answered Talia coldly. “Leviathan has had eyes on you for years now. They go where you go, and they combat threats you cannot imagine. They keep you safe.” She gestured at the file. “This organization fights me at every turn. At every opportunity they block Leviathan, putting you in direct danger.”

            There was a long silence as Damian regarded the symbol before him. Then, brow furrowed, he looked up. “No,” he said again, sliding the file away from him. “I can’t trust this, Mother. You’ve tried to turn me against him before.”

            “I am _trying_ ,” she insisted, “to _protect_ you.”

            “I don’t believe it,” said Damian stubbornly. “And I think it’s sick that you’ve brought me here with obvious intent to manipulate me.”

            He placed his hands firmly on the table before him, and struggled to get to his feet, obviously fighting the pain of his healing spine. Beside him, Yasmeen gently took his arm, steadying him. “ _Khalti_ ,” he said to her, taking her hand. “I don’t want you here with her any longer. Please permit me to take you wherever you want to go when I leave here.”

            With a sad smile, Yasmeen reached out to place her hand gently against his cheek. “ _Habibi_ ,” she replied, “you are very brave, and very clever, but where I want to be is here with her.” She watched him pleasantly, that same small smile on her face. “You are making a mistake,” she told him, slowly and clearly, as if speaking to a child, “by refusing to believe her. Your past blinds you.”

            Damian said nothing for a moment. Then he took hold of her hand, and pulled it away from his face. “If it does,” he said quietly, “it’s her own fault, for leaving wounds that take too long to heal.”

            “Maybe,” said Yasmeen softly, “this is her offering you a bandage, _habibi_.”

            There was a thick silence. Talia watched another woman handle her son with a mother’s touch, and then she looked away, her expression blank and unchanging. Jay felt distinctly uncomfortable, on behalf of all of them.

            Finally, Damian turned away from her. “Jason,” he said. “We’ll leave at dawn.” This, at least, was a relief: even Damian had to admit he was in no condition to travel at the moment, though Jay didn’t imagine he’d be all that much better come morningtime. Regardless, Jay got to his feet.

            “Sounds good,” he said.

            “Yasmeen,” said Talia, from her seat. “Please show Damian to his quarters.” To her son, she said, “Rest assured, you aren’t headed back to the medical bay.”

            But Damian shook his head, standing straight as ever. He was at least a full foot taller than Yasmeen, who still held one of his hands. “I’m staying with Jason,” he said. “I told you already I don’t trust you, Mother, and I meant it. He’s not leaving my side.”

            Jay felt a rush of affection for the kid once more, but he leaned forward and said, fairly, “Listen, I appreciate that, but I’m pretty sure if your mom wanted to off me, she would’ve done it already.”

            “I’m not negotiating,” said Damian plainly, his eyes on his mother. “I know I need rest. Either he stays with me, or we both leave now.”

            Talia considered this, her jaw clenched once more. Then she waved her hand. “Fine. Yasmeen, show them their quarters. Jason can sleep on the floor like a dog for all I care.”

            Dutifully, Yasmeen did so. Damian let go of her hand as they headed through the compound – they moved slowly, as Damian was obviously still unwell – but once they were out of Talia’s earshot he moved to her side. Quietly, he spoke to her in Arabic. She considered his words, then replied. Jason lagged behind them slightly, trying not to intrude on what was obviously a private conversation, even though he couldn’t fully understand the language. Though he did his best to mind his own business, he caught a few words there. _Khalti_ again, which wasn’t a name – maybe an honorific, or a term of endearment? _Habibi_ he knew, though he’d heard it from Talia under extremely different circumstances, and the thought of that made him feel a little uncomfortable, weirdly guilty.

            They exited one building and crossed a short courtyard into a different one. Above them, the moon shone down, bathing the compound in a pool of silver light.

            The second building was made of brick and stone instead of steel and concrete, and felt less like a laboratory and more like a home. On the second floor Yasmeen took them to a room with a tall wooden door, and Damian nodded at him, gesturing for him to enter. He did so, leaving the door slightly ajar. Sure, he wanted to give Damian a little privacy; but they were also still in Talia’s territory, and he didn’t want to let Damian out of his sight.

            He busied himself inspecting the room, but before she left, he caught a glance of Yasmeen holding Damian tightly in her arms.

            The room itself seemed oddly out of place in an otherwise utilitarian compound such as this. There was a bathroom attached, fully stocked with medical supplies, as well as a big four-poster bed and a collection of couches and futons strewn about the room. Two large wardrobes held a number of clothes, though only one contained anything that would fit Damian. The other was full of clothing which seemed comically undersized. Jay rifled through it for a few moments, confused, and then he realized: these must have belonged to Damian when he was a child, back when he lived with Talia.

            He closed the wardrobe to find Damian closing the door to the room. “Everything OK?” asked Jay, as Damian hobbled over to the bed, obviously in pain.

            “I’ll live,” answered Damian, sort of falling onto the bed, dropping his face into the pillow. He sounded exhausted.

            Jay stood there for a moment, and then he crossed the room. “Hey,” he said, dropping a knee beside Damian on the bed. He lowered one of his hands, hovering above Damian’s shoulder cautiously. “Can I take a look?”

            Turning his head onto his cheek, Damian nodded at Jay. Gingerly, he slipped Damian’s arms out of the cloak, then pulled it off of him, revealing his bandaged back. Methodically, Jay inspected the bandages. “These need to be changed,” he muttered. “You wanna wait til the morning?”

            “And give my mother another opportunity to delay our departure?” asked Damian doubtfully. “No. Do it now.”

            Jay didn’t like that tone and he almost said something snarky about how demanding he sounded, but then he stopped himself. Really felt like the wrong time to point out Damian’s similarities with either of his parents.

            After collecting medical supplies from the bathroom, Jason returned to Damian’s side, working very carefully.

            “Hey,” said Jay.

            Damian gave a vague noise of acknowledgement.

            “I thought that was pretty brave,” he said, honestly. “Y’know, everything you said to her. It takes guts to stand up to someone who loves you that much.”

            Another grunt, this one unhappy. “She doesn’t love me.”

            Jason didn’t reply to this, because he figured Damian already knew that wasn’t true.

            There was silence for a while as Jason cleaned and drained Damian’s wound, then replaced the bandages. When he was almost done, Damian, his voice slightly muffled against the pillow, asked, “How do you know her?”

            No easy answer to this, especially not one Jay could admit to her son. But back in the jet, he’d gotten the impression that Damian already had an idea of how Talia al Ghul, sole inheritor of the Lazarus Pits, might have known Jason Todd, formerly dead Robin.

            “She helped me out,” Jay told him, finally, “a long time ago.” Not technically untrue. “You know, in a big way.”

            “Why?”

            “What do you mean why?”

            “Did my father ask her to do it?”

            “Nope,” answered Jay, pressing the bandages against Damian’s dark skin. “Sometimes even supervillains do things outta the goodness of their hearts, Damian. Nobody asked her to do what she did, but she did it anyway, and I owe her for that. I’m always gonna owe her for that.”

            Sharply, Damian said, “I don’t owe her anything.”

            Jason took his hands away. “I didn’t say you did. We’re talking about me, not you. Believe me, I’m not trying to soften you up to her or anything, I’m just saying.” He said nothing, finishing up on Damian’s back. “A woman brings you back from the dead, and you wind up getting to know her pretty well. That’s all.”

            On the pillow, Damian’s eyes were closed. “When?” he asked.

            “When what?”

            “ _When_ ,” repeated Damian, with a hint of impatience. “When did this happen?”

            Taken slightly aback, Jay took a moment to consider this. “I dunno,” he said. “Gotta be about fifteen years or so now.”

            “Fifteen,” echoed Damian.

            “That’s what I said.”

            Damian said nothing.

            Then, his voice very low, he asked, “Did you see me?”

            It felt like Jay’s heartbeat slowed down, as if the blood in his veins were ice. He knew that the truth would hurt Damian, but he also couldn’t bring himself to lie.

            He settled on, “Maybe. Whatever I saw or thought I saw or, hell, hoped I didn’t see, I sure as hell never expected to wind up here.”

            This was unsatisfactory, but Damian had no choice but to accept it. Taking a syringe out of the medical supplies, Jay said, “I’m gonna give you a mild sedative. Won’t knock you out, but it should help you get some sleep. That OK?”

            “Yes,” said Damian, unhappily.

            Jay hesitated, and then he experimentally laid a hand on Damian’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, with genuine regret. “I shouldn’t’ve brought you here. I should’a known it was gonna go south.”

            “No,” said Damian, shaking his head. “It’s all right.” He turned his face away from Jay. “I wanted to see her.”

            Eventually, Damian’s breath slowed as he drifted to sleep. Jay sat with him on the bed the entire night. He was struck with a profound sense of déjà vu, the sense memory of sitting on a bed next protecting a sleeping child coming back to him across all these years. He wondered where Lian Harper was today. Though the dissolution of the Teen Titans had hit Damian hard, Lian had ultimately been the mastermind, manipulated by her mother into violence against her teammates. Jay wondered if maybe Damian didn’t have more in common with Lian than he’d like to admit.

            At some point, Jason must have fallen asleep. He had a dream that he was sixteen years old and stuck behind eyes that could not see, inside a body which did not obey him. He dreamt of himself in Talia’s arms, lowering them both into the Pit together. He dreamt he saw a boy, a scar down the length of his spine, floating face down in the eerie green water.

            In the morning, Jason had to help Damian to his feet. Any pain medication must have worn off, because he seemed wracked with it, hardly able to move. When Damian was in the bathroom, Jay stood outside the door, feeling bizarrely paternal. He supposed it made sense, given his relationship with Damian’s mom, but also acknowledging that whole dynamic was weird as hell so he tried not to think about it.

            Not long after that, there was a knock on the door, and a team of Talia’s medical staff streamed in, replacing Damian’s bandages, giving him several injections, and fitting him in a spinal brace. Yasmeen oversaw this, and when it was done, she smiled at Damian and said, “We took the liberty of fetching your jet. Your mother asks that you consider staying until you are healed, Damian.”

            “No,” replied Damian shortly, as Jason helped him slip a shirt over his brace. “I want to leave now.”

            Yasmeen bowed her head in acknowledgement, then gestured to the door. Without another word, Damian headed out. Jay followed him.

            On the runway behind the compound, Talia stood before the jet. Wind blew in from the mountains, whipping her long dark hair about her face, her cloak of white and gold around her body. In the morning light, she seemed to glow. She must have been wearing heels, because she looked ungodly tall, majestic, fearsome. Despite himself, Jay felt a nostalgic tug of attraction.

            Damian stopped before her, far enough that she could not reach out to touch him. “Mother,” he said.

            “Son,” she replied, cutting him off before he could say any more. She offered him a sly smile.

            Stoically, Damian continued, “I’ll tell my father what you’ve done for me. I imagine he’ll want to look into this Leviathan business himself. I expect he’ll contact you.”

            “I promise I won’t try and kill him,” she told Damian, smoothly.

            “Don’t play games with me,” he said, his voice hard and his brow knit. “If you wish to speak to me, don’t lure me halfway around the world. I’ve left my comm codes with Yasmeen. Use them to contact me directly.”

            If it smarted that Damian gave the codes to Yasmeen instead of to her directly, Talia gave no indication of it. “I didn’t bring you here, Damian.” Her eyes flickered to Jason. “He did.”

            “On your request,” Jay shot back at her.

            “I asked you to bring him to _me_ ,” Talia replied coolly. “Not to some underground base fifty miles away where they would carve him up like a bird.”

            Mercifully, Talia didn’t think to make a crack about Robins. “Wouldn’t have done it at all if you hadn’t called me to begin with,” Jay told her, resentful. He hadn’t liked this encounter, top to bottom – he felt bone-deep guilty for getting Damian hurt in the first place, and it had not been easy to watch mother and son be so unkind to each other. It was clear, too, that Damian was struggling with something much bigger, something a whole lot deeper. In Talia's absence Damian had had a lot of time to reflect on his childhood, and Jay’d gotten the impression he wasn’t ready to forgive his mother just yet. Well. Jay could relate to that.

            “This isn’t his fault,” said Damian, without looking around at Jay. “Don’t bother him again.”

            Talia let out a tinkling laugh. “I will bother him all I want,” she said to Damian. “He owes me a debt.”

            Damian shook his head, but Jay spoke before he could. “Come _on_ ,” he said. “You can’t hang that over my hand forever, T.”

            “Then repay me,” she answered, cocking her head slightly. Her dark eyes focused on Jay, roving up and down his body, as if she could see right through him. “Last time I checked, you’re in the red for two hundred fifty thousand, about ten of my best assassins, and a helicopter, Jason.”

            Ah. So maybe the helicopter was fair: she’d lent it to him for his reintroduction back to Gotham, and he’d wound up crashing it pretty bad.

            “Those assassins were assholes,” he replied lamely. A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

            Her gaze raked back to her son, who watched her warily, suspicious of this exchange. “I was sorry to hear about the Titans,” she told him, causing Damian’s eyebrows to immediately shoot up in surprise. “I liked Miss West very much. The two of you could have been very powerful together.”

            Damian said nothing, but Jay caught the bitterness in his expression, the resentful anger, fire with no oxygen to burn. He glanced around, away from Talia’s gaze.

            “I understand Jade Nguyen was responsible for that wreck,” Talia continued, almost offhandedly, as if commenting on the weather. “I don’t imagine it would be too difficult to hunt her down and punish her for what she put you through.”

            “No need,” murmured Damian, his eyes sliding back to Talia. “Her daughter is already on the job.”

            Talia arched one elegant eyebrow. “Is she now?” she asked, and Jay didn’t like how intrigued she sounded. When Damian refused to reply to this, Talia let out a small sigh and moved forwards, taking hold of one of her son’s hands. Damian did not pull away.

            “ _Ya amar_ ,” she said to him, lifting her free hand to his face, swiping her thumb beneath his eye. “ _Ya rouhi_.” Jason knew that one, and felt a flush of awkwardness, knowing he was intruding on something deeply personal. He looked away, trying to give them some privacy. “ _Ana bahebak, ya ibni. Ya’aburnee_.”

            Damian said nothing, refusing to look his mother in the eye. He gave her a short nod, little more than a bob of his head.

            She slipped her hand behind his neck and pulled him downwards to press her lips against his forehead. This bent his bound back at a bad angle, and he grimaced in pain.

            For a moment, something seemed to fade from Talia’s ever-perfect veneer, and with both hands she held her son’s head, kissing him on both cheeks. There was urgency in the way she held him, a deep longing, a desperate regret. She looked like a mother who loved her son too much to let him go; and in the end, Jay figured, that wasn’t too far from the truth.

            But then she stepped back, her hands on her son’s shoulders. “Be safe,” she instructed him, stern once more. “Leviathan will be watching over you. You will not be the downfall of our line, my son. You are my pride, and my joy.”

            “I’m not an al Ghul,” he said to her, quietly.

            Her hands tightened on his shoulders, her grip vicelike. “Yes,” she said, peering hard into his eyes, fierce conviction in her voice. “You will always be an al Ghul, Damian. You will always be my son.”

            Jason and Damian left Talia on the tarmac, guiding the jet away from the rising sun. For a long time, Damian said nothing.

            “We'll need to make a stop outside Gotham,” he said. It was the first thing he’d said in hours.

            Jay glanced at him. “Why?”

            “A rudimentary inspection,” he answered, sounding bored. “For explosive devices, any kind of toxin release mechanism. Just in case.”

            “In case what?” asked Jay, frowning at him. “You think your mom hooked some kind of suicide bomb into your spine, or something?”

            Damian would have shrugged, but that hurt him so he didn’t. “Last time this happened she installed a failsafe. I wouldn’t put it past her to do it again.” He looked around at Jay and added, “I’ll have my father do a complete scan when I get home, but before we get there I’d like you to take a look first.” He repeated, “Just in case.”

            Jason’s instinct was to tell Damian that Talia would never do that to her son, but he stopped himself. It wasn’t his place to tell Damian what his mother would or wouldn’t do. Jay didn’t know her the way Damian did, and he didn’t have any right to intervene. Too much baggage Damian had to figure out how to carry for himself.

            As Damian requested, Jay found a spot outside of Gotham to set down before they reached the Manor. Damian shed his shirt and the brace, allowing Jason to inspect the wound. The jagged incision had been closed with surgical staples, which meant that a metal detector was functionally useless, so Jay used his eyes and his gloved fingers and a multipurpose scanner Bruce had developed years ago. He detected nothing amiss, which was what he’d expected, but he did a thorough job anyway.

            When he pressed too hard, Damian winced. “You want me to help you explain all this to Bruce?” Jay asked, still working.

            “No,” answered Damian. He sounded unhappy. “He’ll get angry with you for it, and that isn’t fair.”

            “Eh. I’m sorta used to it, by now.”

            Damian did not reply to this, so Jason too fell silent. He finished as best as he could, running his thumb along the staples one last time. The scarring was going to be intense, even worse than before.

            “Jason,” said Damian.

            Jay glanced up, but Damian didn’t turn around, so he could only look at the back of his head, the dark curls there. “Mhm?”

            “Thank you,” he said.

            “Aw,” said Jay, shaking his head, reaching for the bandages to cover the wound once more. “I didn’t do much. If anything, I really just fucked things up.”

            Still looking away from him, his voice low, Damian said, “You…gave me the choice. My father was never going to give that to me, albeit maybe for valid reasons, but still.” He shook his head slightly, but fell silent.

            When he did not speak again, Jay returned to reapplying bandages. He was reminded, viscerally, of sitting in the bathroom of a safehouse what felt like a thousand years ago, stitching a bullet hole closed on Damian’s arm. Damian had been fourteen years old. Back then they’d barely known each other, but Jason’s heart ached for that kid and for the kid sitting in front of him, son of the Bat, son of the Demon, a boy tugged in all directions at the mercy of those who thought they knew best for him. Though he was brilliant and competent and stronger and better than anyone Jay had ever known, Damian had never asked for any of that. Perfection came at the expense of personal freedom. First by his mother’s hand and then by the strict code of his father, Damian had been denied the luxury of choice his entire life. Now like then, Jason felt for him, an ache deep in his chest, somewhere untouchable.

            “I missed her,” said Damian. His voice sounded distant, like his head was far away.

            Jason didn’t have anything to say to that. He understood that: the searing pain of separation, even though in your heart you knew you should never, ever want to go back.

            He finished bandaging Damian up, then clapped him on the shoulder.

            “You’ll be OK, kiddo,” he told him.

            Damian let out a long breath, then reached up to run his hand through his hair. He glanced around, catching Jason’s eye.

            “Don’t call me that,” he said.


End file.
